As House Republicans rushed through a bill designed to partially repeal and replace the law known as Obamacare this week, the arguments against them sounded awfully familiar — because Republicans had used them before, when Obamacare was first passed.
Witness a prime example featuring OZY Editor-in-Chief Carlos Watson, who interviewed Paul Ryan on MSNBC in the heady summer of 2009. At the time, Ryan was a rising star on the Republican side and OZY but a gleam in Watson’s eye. Ryan, now the speaker of the House, objected to Democrats moving health care bills through committee after months of debate — and months before they’d actually pass what became the Affordable Care Act.
“I don’t think we should pass bills that we haven’t read, that we don’t know what they cost,” Ryan told Watson at the time. This week, to cobble together the votes needed for a health care bill to pass, the 2017 version of Paul Ryan added fresh amendments to the massive bill as it hit the House floor — before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could tell lawmakers what it costs.
With Watson, Ryan 2009 talked up the time he spent meeting with constituents and slammed the “artificial deadline” of completing a bill before August recess — a deadline Democrats would not hit, amid internal squabbles. This week, House Republicans, under heavy pressure from Donald Trump’s White House, sped the bill through before taking off for a weeklong recess at home.
